


Unpaid

by Ysmiyr



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: And like enough selfesteem issues to drown even mine out, Angst with a Happy Ending, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, I think?, Insecure Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, M/M, Protective Jaskier | Dandelion, fucked up views on relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:55:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23422795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysmiyr/pseuds/Ysmiyr
Summary: People stay in Geralt's life for many reasons. Some for protection, some for mild curiosity, some by simple routine don’t think to leave, some because they don't have a choice. Even then, he doesn’t want to loose that company that though is out of pity or routine or curiosity, is better than not having any.So he is never dumb enough to go to them with empty hands.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 65
Kudos: 841





	Unpaid

**Author's Note:**

> What can I say; I was writing to see if i could get out of the writer's block on my other fic, and this jumped out? Very feely, didn't really know where it was going until the end. Don't know where to put it, seeing as it doesn't fit any of the series i have going on so... A oneshot it is. It's also the first ever i wrote so many words in one sitting so... go me!  
> So, enjoy?

Vesimir, Lambert and Eskel are already settled in for the winter by the time Geralt rides up the gates of Kaer Morhen. They always are by the time he manages to get there, loosing days and days on the woods at the begging of the path going up the mountains trying to talk himself out of going this time.

He never skips.

He knows Vesimir and Eskel already made all the arrangements for food in the nearby settlements, he knows Lambert already scavenged up all the furs in the keep plus some extra. He knows they already aired out the fortress as much as they can, and already readied all the rooms the four of them would need. There never is anything left for him to help with, and considering that the things that need to be done are tame work, _house_ work, he figures it's fair they don't want him traipsing about messing with everything and making the job twice as hard.

In winter there are less monsters that stray too close to the keep, but whenever one is sighted Geralt is always the first one to jump offering to manage them. That is one thing he _can_ do, the one thing he was _made_ for, more so than any of the others. He was shattered and remade, build from ash and blood and silver to be just the nightmare monsters would tell _their_ children about. But he does not kill them, most of the time, for those monsters are thin and miserable and _starv_ _ing_ and Geralt can't make himself do it if he doesn't have to. He can't do the one thing he is good for, the only way he can contribute to the offer of shelter, but the others don't know. He doesn't tell them, and they don't _know._

He is the only witness to his own hypocrisy and uselessness.

He can't give them anything back, he can't pay for his stay in services and certainly not in coin. Occasionally he can manage some very rare ingredients, but only Vesimir and _sometimes_ Eskel are interested in it. He settles for bringing in a worrying amount alcohol and it seems to please everyone, so he supposed it wasn't so bad. Maybe.

He knows it is. Very unequal, that is.

He never feels at ease there.

Not because he expects an attack, not because he thinks the other witchers are going to harm him or send him away. He knows they wouldn't.

But he also knows it's routine that keeps them from saying he shouldn't come next winter. He knows it's routine that makes them smile and laugh and cling to him, knows Vesimir does not miss him as much as _Geralt_ missed him. He knows Eskel did not spend the year thinking how much he missed Geralt's grumpiness like he has missed his brother's easy temper, that Lambert probably never remembers him at all. He knows they keep him like people keep a stray dog, letting it sleep on their back porch in a violent downpour with pity and distrust; but these people are the ones he has known all his life, and he can't bear the thought to go an entire year without seeing them.

He never feels welcome there.

But it would be worse to _not_ be there.

\---

He doesn't know what makes Triss attracted to him, in either sense of the word. She is a court mage, soft and pleasant and kind. Her smile is wide, unguarded, and her eyes are always so _welcoming_.

He never finds her in anywhere else but a plush castle or mansion, he never sees her do any work that is not healing or advising. People of the city, distrustful as they are about magic users, never have a bad word about her.

So he does not understand just what she _wants_ with him.

He first thinks it's just that sorcerers _like_ to fuck a witcher; they like the novelty of non-ending stamina and someone that doesn't fear them and that can take far more than any human or most non-humans. Geralt met many just like that, and he slept with almost all of them, for closeness is closeness, regardless of how bad is the aftermath.

But that's all they want him for; those people are up and dressing, away from him as quickly as they can afterwards. They don't acknowledged him when they meet again, or if they do they don't look pleased or warm or even friendly.

Triss does. She does, and she always clings to him afterwards. She always makes her face look so sad to see him leave, too.

And she never asks for anything back, and it only makes it _worse_.

So he offers information about his mutations and signs unprompted, because he knows she is as curious as the fox some moniker her after; He tells her all he dares and _more_ , because if the payment for her company is information, he has to deliver completely. He brings in difficult to get herbs if he knows he has a chance to meet her, sometimes he even takes some of his most damaging decoctions for her to study.

He doesn't think about what some ill advised mage might do with all the information he gives her, he doesn't consider it could be dangerous, even though it could be, to him and all of his companions in trade.

He gets company. One that is not paid in coin, but it must be paid all the same.

\---

Yennefer is difficult.

Difficult not only because he doesn't know how to _give_ her everything, but because she is the first one to be bound to him, actually _bound_ , by his doing and none of her will.

It does make him sick. He never intended for the wish's outcome to be this, he _never_ wanted to force himself on _anyone_ , let alone _Yennefer_.

She is always there when he starts to doubt they ever actually _met_ , she is always there when he is in a just too tight of a space to definitely need the help she gives without asking and he wished she would _stop_ , because what can you give someone that has it all, wants it all and you have _nothing_?

She never tells him to leave, either.

If she wants something, she demands him get it for her and really that's the least he can do to pay her back for the company and the banter and the _closeness_ , but the fact she has to ask, that he can't anticipate and can't be ready for whatever she wishes really is another point in how much he is completely useless for her.

And the comparisons he can trace to Istredd and her other conquests always make him nauseous but he _can't_ go away. He bound her, _against her will_ , and he can't even leave her well enough alone.

He can't leave her side, and he can't pay her, and she feels like his utmost failure.

\---

Until _Ciri_ , that is.

She wasn't even born when he doomed her fate, tying their lives together just as he did with Yennefer, robbing her of all her agency.

She isn't even born yet and her life is already marked to be sullied with his presence, no matter how much he runs from _it_ , from _her_ and from _himself_.

She is terrifying because she is a _child_ and always looks so _elated_ to see him.

Everytime he meets up with her under Yennefer's supervision – he isn't stupid to think he is allowed to take the child to anywhere where the sorceress isn't - Ciri talks and talks about her life, wanting him to know _everything_ about her, everything about her opinions and her likes and dislikes. She talks and talks and she asks questions and all the while she is touching him. Perched on his shoulders, on his knees, sitting on the ground next to him, pulling on his hair and braiding it back, hugging him next the dinner table and she never, not even once, reacts like she wants anything other than his presence, his _attention_.

She is terrifying because she is a _princess_ , and she lives under _Yennefer's_ wing, and really how could he give her _anything_? He lives on the road, he has no home and nothing to his name besides Roach and the very armor and swords on his person. He can't give her anything, just like he can't give Yennefer anything.

He tries making do with teaching her everything she wants, be that sword fighting, wrestling, hunting, fishing, sewing. If she wants to learn he will teach her, or find a way to learn himself before running back to pass the knowledge over.

It doesn’t feel like enough, but Ciri seems happy.

It will never feel like enough, to both pay for the company and to apologize for the horrible thing he did to her, but it's all he can offer.

He never felt so in debt to someone.

\---

Jaskier is one of the most puzzling things that ever happened to him.

He is the easiest to understand the closeness, the easiest to understand his role for.

Until it isn't.

Until the bard whips out a sword and dispatches of the four _gang members_ – and really how did he even got involved into _that_ \- before Geralt can even gauge if he should make a distraction or go for the violent route _himself_ he is left hanging rather unceremoniously on the edge of a dull knife he hates to have to see again.

Jakier doesn't need his protection.

Jaskier doesn't need his knowledge; he is university trained and a _noble_.

He doesn't want to have someone else he can't pay in his life, so he just tries to send him away.

Jaskier also does _not_ leave.

No matter what Geralt tries, no matter that he says, Jaskier is always there when he turns around.

And that is the most _horrible_ type of torture, because why, _why_ does this _bard_ , braver than most of the warriors he ever met, is so insistent on _being_ with him? He is _never_ afraid, he is _never_ discouraged, and he goes on to complete the most _impossible_ task of changing Geralt's reputation to something worth _respecting_ – and _succeeds._

Geralt would already owe him so much just by his continued presence in spite of Geralt's appalling manners. He doesn't know now if he could _ever_ pay the man back, even if he lived to be a millenia old. Even if _Jaskier_ lived to be a hundred years old, which he probably wouldn't.

He never met _anyone_ like the bard before, and he doesn't have any clue on what to do.

Yennefer would _tell_ him what he could do, even if that made his face burn in shame. Ciri wanted to _learn_ , and he had more than a hundred years of experience on her, so it wasn't that difficult yet. Triss wanted to _talk_ , and he could always do that, too.

Jaskier didn't ask for anything.

He was always talking, and he always wanted quite simple things like early rest and a warm bath, good food and lengthy feedback on his work, but he usually went about getting those things with his own actions. Geralt didn't get a chance to _do_ anything for him.

He only ever asked for one thing, and it was to care for _Geralt_ instead. Not in so many words, but Jaskier would push him down and wash his hair and soothe his straining muscles shushing Geralt everytime he tried to shrug it off; Would pin him on the stool with fire in his clear eyes and stitch him back up with the gentlest of touches; Would spend hours upon hours watching him closely when making his potions so he would learn, so he would have ready the same things Geralt did, _just in case._

Geralt might be the one hunting their dinner while out in the woods, but Jaskier was the one skinning and roasting them, not letting Geralt intervene, sending him instead to lie down and “get comfortable”.

Geralt didn't know what he _could_ offer, so he figured he should try everything out of his _very_ meager options because the debt he owed was one that would take a whole lot more than time to even out.

He left out teaching him to fight immediately, because that was clearly something the bard already _knew_. He also left out offering to prepare all their food, because Jaskier seemed to actually _like_ to cook. Any offers of protection seemed silly and otherwise unnecessary, so that was also out. Offering sex as payment always left him feeling uneasy and wrong footed, and while he would do it if that was the price, way less reluctant if it was the bard on the bed with him, Jaskier's prowess was sung _far_ and _wide_ and whatever Geralt could even _think_ to do would never satisfy the other man.

What was left were very few options indeed. And none of them seemed like enough effort; like adequate compensation for the chore.

Every day that passed the options he did have looked more and more like excuses to keep the bard in his life for longer, completely disregarding that he would be happier and safer back in a city, away from him and his greedy manners.

When he noticed just how many excuses he was making for fear of loosing the man, loosing the easy companionship, the uncomplicated smiles and stories swapped under the cover of the night, Geralt did the only thing he knew how to do in those scenarios.

He ripped off the metaphorical bandage fast and viciously.

He carefully winded their path to Oxenfurt over the following weeks, set them up in the best inn he could find, left the room paid for a week and went to find a job.

Besides having payed the room for such a long time in advance, this was familiar territory, might even be called routine, something he and Jaskier had done together for _years_ at this point. So the bard didn't think much of Geralt leaving to look for a job.

Geralt did find one, and as it was already nightfall, he didn't bother to go back to grab some potions, _just in case_. He didn't intend to go back for more than his horse, anyway.

It was probably a noonwraith, by the accounts the old woman gave him and his cursory search of the appointed site. It is probably a noonwraith, by the accounts of his century's worth of knowledge and his gut feeling.

It wasn't a noonwraith.

There were three of them, covering a spawn of land not even _his_ freakish nature could outrun safely to regroup and come back more prepared.

The moon was a thin, shy thing, covered completely by the trees and the flurry of spectral movement. The _smell_ of them- metallic, bitter, hard and sharp as a poison covered razor- filled his nose until nothing was left, no grass or beggarthick blossoms or the ash like smell of long burning torches. The ozone of his own magic felt weak, dying whispers to their bruising howls.

His head was lost to his senses, nothing coming trough but the thunderous roar of their forms hitting his signs. He moved by hearing, back exposed where it should have been guarded, forearms slashed when they should have been pulled back. He couldn't follow them.

Witchers never retire, not really.

Except they do.

Seven feet bellow ground if they are lucky enough for that.

\-------

He wakes in a forest.

It has all the little sounds every forest should have; crickets, wind rattling against the canopies, birds chirping a ways away, the steady hum of nearby water. If he concentrates he can hear rabbits somewhere near, can hear the ants and rushing of growing grass.

Takes him a moment to notice, however, that the smell of it is off.

Forests smell damp, mostly. Damp earth, moss, sometimes blood, sometimes a flower joins in, and the ever present _something_ that almost reminds him of magic, but isn't quite as suffocating.

What he smells instead is salt.

Salt and blood and an acrid thing that rolls his guts as if they are rearranging themselves. It's heavy and smothering, pungent in a way very few things are to him anymore, clogs up his eyes and makes them water as if someone punched him in the nose.

He makes an effort to move, but the slight twitch from his hand makes a very familiar face surge up on his field of vision.

“Oh thank _gods_.” Jaskier's voice is wrecked, rough and raspy and almost _gone_.

Geralt looks at him, eyes still burning with the sting of the scent, head gone so far deep into shock that it goes blank.

Jaskier drops his head again and this time Geralt can feel the weight upon his chest, the warmth of him pressed close to his right side, hands clutching at his shoulders as if Geralt would dissolve if he let go.

Geralt can feel the spike in the sour smell, a hint of something fresher but no less asphyxiating taking it's side. He looks to the sky, wandering whether or not his afterlife should have a crying Jaskier in it.

“What were you _thinking_?” Jaskier murmurs a while later. He doesn't pull his head up, and his words are muffled by Geralt's shirt. His armor is nowhere on him and he is for some reason very afraid of moving his head to look for it.

“What were you thinking, Geralt?” Jaskier insists, his grip tightening. When no answer floats up to his ears, he surges up with more strength than his shaking would suggest him to still possess,

“ _Answer me, damn it._ ”

“Why--Are you bloodied?” Is what the witcher says instead, the contrast between the burnt brown tone and Jaskier's bloodshot eyes is striking enough to jerk him out of his stupor.

“ _Why_ am I bloodied? Why don't we start with _why you are bloodied?_ This-” He goes up further, displaying his ruined chemise, soaked through enough to be hard to the touch, his red and brown smudged arms, “This is _your_ blood. You ruined my clothes, so might you be so _kind_ to give me an explanation to why you were intending to bleed yourself dry like a _pig_?”

He doesn't show it, at least he doesn't think he does, but the words are a harder sting than any of the cuts and bruises Geralt can start to feel blooming on him.

“Sorry.” Is all he manages to say though a suddenly paralyzed tongue. “Sorry.” He repeats because _sorry_ isn't enough, _sorry_ doesn't begin to cover his despair and terror at the situation – because this very much _isn't, couldn't_ be his so sought after afterlife- and at the devastated sight he is punished with.

Jaskier lifts completely off and the abrupt cold that sweep into Geralt's bones is startling enough for him to launch into shivering as if to protect himself from hypothermia.

“ _Wait-_ ” He is grateful he can't speak louder, for the shame at his impulse reaction was brutal and unforgiving, upping his shivering and the pain his uncoordinated limbs sends to his brain makes him thump back down in how much it makes his head spin.

“I'm here, _I'm right here_ I was just getting you some water.” The warm hands tipping his head forwards would be burning him to cinders with humiliation if it didn't felt so _good_. “Small sips, come on.” The words are soft despite Jaskier's initial outburst, and the softness is worse than if the bard was raving and spiting abuse; they keep hold of him by the throat, by the hair, unrelenting, but the grip is tender, just hard enough to be present and Geralt hates how much they crumple him like a used sheet of paper.

“There.” Jaskier shuffles, and Geralt finally gathers enough courage up to scan his eyes down and land somewhere near the bard's ear. He can only sort of see Jaskier contorting his face, scrubbing with the back of his hands at the still falling tears leaving gruesome tracks on his unmarred skin.

“Can you tell me what the _hell_ happened there, Geralt? Give one good reason of _why_ I almost lost you or so help me-”

“... _What?”_

“It did take me a while I admit, but when I noticed none of your bags where with me, and after checking on them found it all still strapped to Roach- and her saddled, no less!- it started to tickle me that _something_ wasn't right.” He stops for a second to inhale more air, chest heaving, “And _then_ I see your potions bag there; actually I see _everything_ there minus your silver sword, all packed and ready to go- but you had set the room up for a while don't think I didn't notice that- and you didn't tell me anything but after such a long while I thought I deserved more consideration than you _leaving in the middle of the night with not so much as a by your leave_!” He screams the last part, out of breath and teary. He doesn't make any moves to get up, and holds Geralt in place by the still gentle hand on his forearm.

“I wasn't-”

“If you are going to tell me you weren't going to leave I will finish what those things started.” Geralt clicks his mouth shut, still shivering and still feeling it inside his very bone marrow. His silence seems to be all the answer Jaskier needs.

“ _Why?_ ” It's an ugly, agonizing thing, and the smell that rises up now is different but no less grueling than the other one; Still salty and bitter but underlined with road dust and sunset and _farewell_. “I thought we were fine after so many years. What did I _do?_ What was enough for you?”

Geralt's heart does stop for a second.

The plea he is hearing is akin anything he ever heard, and coming from _Jaskier_ of all people, kind and affectionate and talented Jaskier who can have anything he wants because he simply smiled and _asked_ for it.

“You didn't...Do. Anything.” He pushes out. Jaskier wipes again at his face.

“Well alright. What was I lacking? What is it so terrible to forget that you prefer to leave me behind rather than talk to me?”

“ _You don't let me pay you!_ ” It rushes out and Geralt blames his clearly potion muddled mind for the words. Heat rises to his face, tingling like bee stings, but he knows there is no color to show for it. Maybe his eyes get wetter, but that is a maybe that doesn't happen often.

“What.” Jaskier doesn't seem to know if he should be offended or not. “Pay me for _what_ , what are you talking about?” When Geralt presses his lips together in lieu of answering, Jaskier leans forward and grabs at his face instead, one hand on each cheek. “You are not getting out of this so easy. I sat here with you for a week Geralt, and I know _every one_ of the potions I poured down your very uncooperative mouth. Answer me.”

“That is exactly the problem.” The tone he is aiming for is the usual dead one, the one he uses when he is running so much behind his own eyes that he need to retreat. He lands on a weak whimper, a shaky thing that makes him sound like he's crying.

By the look Jaskier is suddenly giving him, he might be.

“I know you don't like people helping you, but really am I so obtrusive? I thought I learned well enough.” He seems to know the answer, but his voice is so, _so_ gentle Geralt finds himself melting under it. He closes his eyes as he admits to what has been pairing over their heads since day one,

“You are invaluable. But you still won't let me _pay you back._ ”

The silence is deafening, just then.

“Oh, dear.” Jaskier murmurs. It's awful and painful and Geralt can _taste_ the tears now. “Geralt, look at me for a second.”

Haltingly, he does. Jaskier has the entire sky and ocean for eyes, blue and deep and mesmerizing. The embodiment of rhe gentle days, of calm seas and clear skies that lull you to the best sleep you ever had.

“You don't owe me _anything_ , how can you ever _think_ that? Who do you take me for?”

“A very famous bard who could have anything and anyone who keeps following me around for gods knows why, wasting away his time with a lost cause.” The bard looks like someone just struck him in the face.

“Oh. It's not what you take _me_ for, is it.” Geralt doesn't know what to answer with his teeth chattering as they are, with his eyes blurred as they are. “I follow you around because you are my _dearest friend,_ how could I _not_?” Geralt knows the noise that leaves him, despite being bitten back, is entirely not human; he can feel his sharp canines biting into his own lips at his uncoordination to even speak.

“Friend? _Friend?_ Jaskier whatever the _fuck_ this relationship is it isn't _friendship_ ; I can barely call it _equal_ , let alone-”

“Equal? For whom, exactly? From my view, it is I who am not putting as much at the table here.”

“ _You?_ You walk around with me for longer than anyone _ever_ has, that alone could be your answer if all the rest wasn't already so damming.”

Jaskier is silent again, and this time his tears drop to Geralt's face. He feels so numb he wouldn't know it if he hadn't seen them fall.

“Do you truly believe all of that?”

There is a beat where Geralt is fighting valiantly to swallow around his strangled throat enough times to forms words again.

“I don't have friends.” He bites. Jaskier bares his teeth in return, but its sad, twisted and empty.

“What do you have then?”

“...People stay if I can be useful.” He tries to eat the words before they can leave but they just tumble out, mouth loose, “If I can give enough, then maybe the hassle of leaving would be bigger than the one for staying. But you never let me be useful, I cant give you anything; and you haven't left yet.”

“And I'm never going to, you big moron.” Jaskier cuts in, leaning back and holding his hands instead. “Can you sit up a bit? I don't want to talk about this laying down.”

Takes a while, a fair bit of cursing and maneuvering but Geralt ends up sitting propped against a tree. His body thrums with aches and pains, but he can feel their sharpness as an indicator of how much worse it would be without the care Jaskier clearly dotted on him for the entire week -gods _he is_ getting slow- he was out.

“And now this. Did you save my life? That's never being repaid, _damn_.” He whispers because saying them any louder would shatter him. Jaskier, at his side, shakes his head.

“Listen to me, Geralt. And I mean _listen_ , because I will say this as many times as you need to get it trough your trauma-ridden thick ass skull: The only thing you owe me is, right here, right now, to not lie to me. I will not leave you, probably not even if you asked, and I never want anything from you that you aren't willing to give, of your free will, knowing I won't leave.”

“There is _nothing_ I wouldn't give you.” Geralt murmurs, because the rest of that statement sounds suspiciously like what he always wanted to be real.

Jaskier's noise is as if _he_ was the one split open by noonwraiths. “I am a greedy man, witcher. I know you, and I won't take anything until you understand that.”

“But-”

“No. Whatever happened to you to make this your default is a fucking tragedy, as if the rest of your life already isn't, but it doesn't have to define you.”

Geralt finds he can't speak. He turns his head away only to be pulled back by the lightest of touches on his jaw. “Do you hear me? _Look_ at me, Geralt; I'm dripping blood on my very fine clothes, tossed as a pretzel on a forest floor _not at all_ in the most pleasant ways, tired, hungry and cold, honestly, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Not if I knew you would be here, by yourself, on a much worse situation.”

“I don't need pity.”

“I don't have any to give.”

“I don't like being indebted.”

“Good thing you are not, then.” Jaskier doesn't even blink to throw his last attempts at his face, voice even but tone sharp. Geralt tries very hard to think about a life where Jaskier wants him around for nothing else but his company, and finds he can't imagine _anyone_ doing that.

“I'm not-”

“You are.”

“You don't know what I was going to say.”

“Doesn't matter. You aren't a good judge of what you are right now.”

“And you are?” Jaskier smiles; not twisted or worried, though it is a little melancholic still,

“Darling,” He drawls, “I have been singing about _nothing_ but _you_ ever since we _met_.”

“One more-”

“And I _never_ intend to stop.” Jaskier cuts trough, firm and with braising forges behind his eyes. His fingers are tight where they grip Geralt's hand above their thighs, calluses digging pleasantly into his palms, grounding when his words make Geralt floaty and _wanting_ , heavy when his words are light.

Geralt doesn't say anything for a long time. Jaskier doesn't leave his side and doesn't even really move, aside from leaning comfortably against his shoulder.

The night falls, the last rays of the sun are slithering away, and just when Geralt is positive Jaskier is asleep, he finds courage to stammer out,

“I want to believe you.”

“Then do.”

The sun dies out, and a new type of forest comes alive. Jaskier had stopped smelling like salt and blinding vinegar, and though the blood is a very present entity still, he smells much more like moleyarrow, celandine, the bittersweet tang of stammelford's dust and redanian red. He smells like a Beltane's bonfire, like honeyed roasted meat, like well kept leather.

“I can't.” Jaskier smile is small, pressed close on his arm, passed between them by touch.

“Can't you?”

It takes some time, for Geralt never smelt it this strong directed at _him_ of all people, but.

He smells like _love_.


End file.
